Momentum: Film Review

Olga Kurylenko makes a pretty lean, mean fighting machine but it is just a shame that she only gets to prove it with a leading role in the lacklustre Momentum. She is worthy of more than this!

She stars as Alexis, who robs diamonds from a safety deposit box in a bank with her crew and also comes across another item. It turns out to be a flash drive, with information containing a terrorism plot planned up by a Senator played by Morgan Freeman. He enlists hitman/assassin/enforcer Mr. Washington (James Purefoy), who is tasked with popping off her and her crew to retrieve the drive. He gets more than he bargains for with Alexis and what follows is big, old, convoluted game of cat and mouse.

We have seen Kurylenko prove her action star skills in Oblivion so I knew she was more than capable of handling that side of things, and in strict action terms, this will entertain in a really mind-numbing fashion. There are car chases, explosions, gun fights and hand-to-hand combat but because I had no idea who these characters were, I just could not get involved.

There is very little explanation about who Alexis is and why she wanted to steal the diamonds in the first place, so although you want her to prevail, you don’t really know the full reason behind anything going on. And that could work for a short while, but when it is chase upon chase, you need more to make it fulfilling. There is no character development, especially for Freeman’s politician and Washington. They are given very obvious villain lines that you have heard a million times before – it is very by-the-book and cliched. I feel like I have seen Purefoy literally play this role before.

Considering it is an action film, I actually found it very boring, because nothing was surprising and it just like every low-rent generic action movie you have ever seen. I’m extremely disappointed that Kurylenko couldn’t save the movie with her kick-ass moves, that Freeman even signed on and that there seems to be sequels in the works.